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Thomas Paine and the Literature of Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2005)

In Thomas Paine and the Literature of Revolution I argue that Paine's seemingly unsophisticated language deliberately masks a profound critique of the elitist assumptions undergirding the major political and rhetorical currents of the eighteenth century. Armed with a style designed to exploit the new democratic ideas of the Anglo-American world, Paine mobilized a public long excluded from the political arena. But the sophistication of Paine’s style has rarely been noticed. Although the impact of works such as Common Sense and The Rights of Man has led historians to study Paine’s role in the American Revolution and political scientists to evaluate his contributions to political theory, scholars have tacitly agreed not to treat him as a literary figure. My book not only redresses this omission, but also demonstrates that Paine’s literary sensibility is particularly evident in the very texts that confirmed his importance as a theorist. My contention is that the neglect of his literary merit derives both from the association of Paine with the “masses” (as if to be popular is necessarily not to be intellectual), and from the way Paine’s ideas arouse in his readers profound and abiding fears of the more radical dimensions of the Revolution. Through an analysis of Paine’s writings and popular image, Thomas Paine and the Literature of Revolution aims to restore an appreciation of the radicalness of the American Revolution. To that end, it recovers Paine as a transatlantic popular intellectual whose ideas challenge many of the fundamental dichotomies of the age.

Current Research

I am currently working on a new book, The Loyalist Origins of United States Culture, that springs from the observation that most of the canonical literature and art of the early republic was the work of loyalists or loyalist sympathizers. Often heralded as the progenitors of a new and distinct United States culture, figures such as Crevecoeur, Rowson, and Cooper, either subscribed to or were strongly drawn to the idea that American culture remained essentially British. Moreover, among the public at large roughly one third of the colonists had opposed the violent separation from Great Britain. Acknowledging loyalism as a significant political and intellectual movement, my book recasts the cultural and ideological debates of the period in terms of a contest among legitimate competing versions of an American future. Ultimately, the book contends that loyalists were the architects of mainstream American literature and culture.

Edward Larkin

Assistant Professor